I was wondering if you were the guy that worked on SNES NHL'95 as the Software Engineer?

Yes, Iâ€™m that guy.

As Software Engineer did you get the old SNES NHL'94 software to work from and just get to tweak it or how do you do it?

Did you have to start from scratch?

Youâ€™re talking about a project that I worked on in 1994. That was a long time ago, but I do remember a few things.

We had the '94 code base for reference. For most of the project I was the only programmer on the project.

Jonah came on in the last month, and really helped get it out the door.

NHL 95 really wasnâ€™t one of my prouder accomplishments.

I guess it didnâ€™t turn out too bad considering the 4 month dev cycle, that problem with the south end goalie is pretty in-excusable

(because of a bug, he never moves).

We had about twice that amount of time for NHL 96, and it turned out much, much nicer.

Do you and Jonah guys still talk?

I do stay in touch with Jonah.

I was disappointed with SNES NHL 95 and NHL 96.

Iâ€™m sorry that you were disappointed with NHL 95. I have not had much feedback from fans. When I commented about my disappointment with the southern goalie, the disappointment I have really has to do with the fact that I didnâ€™t notice.The problem was a typo-graphical error. There were more than 2 dozen other people that could have noticed the problem with that goalie and said something â€¦ most notably the testers. I definitely share the blame for the goalie, but Iâ€™m not alone.

The Genesis 94 was created before the SNES. The SNES was a clone of the Genesis game, and ran at a much lower frame rateâ€¦ For the 95 version, I was in charge of porting over updates from the Genesis to the Snes (so we inherited all the Genesis Gameplay elements). I believe the Genesis Lead is named Mark Lesser. There was a big push to increase the frame rate beyond the 20 FPS that the SNES 94 game ranâ€¦ we brought it up to about 45FPS â€¦ in terms of frame rate, a big improvement. Still not the 60 FPS that the machine is capable of (another thing I was disappointed about).

I worked for Visual Concepts, my boss was Greg Thomas. He picked up the contract from EA in late March, and we got the archive around the first week of April. Greg assigned me to the project.

I was told that another developer had been working on the 95 version for about 6 months, but that their lead died, and they were unable to complete the project. I donâ€™t know which developer, and we never received a copy of their work.

Weird you didn't get his work.

Even if you got his work would it have been like Genesis NHL'95 with long legs and bad graphics and fast gameplay?

Most likely it would have been just like Genesis. Ultimately, the same producers were in charge.

Why would SNES even get a new Developer?

EA back then, didnâ€™t do a lot of SNES in house. They made more money on Genesis, and SNES was more of an after-thought. Because of this, they had a tendency to farm out the work on SNES. Often times you try new developers because you werenâ€™t happy with the developer you were working with before. Sometimes, itâ€™s a matter of costs. I couldnâ€™t say exactly how Visual Concepts ended up getting the contract for NHL 95.

The graphical line look was determined by the Art Director, and the production staff. The production staff wanted the graphical enhancements to the rink, the crowd, etc. We probably had access to the Genesis for reference, and art staff at Visual Concepts did the rest.

As far a monetary compensation goes, I was working on salary for Visual Concepts. At the time I was working about 80 hours per week on the project.

An hourly translation would be about $8.00 an hour.

EA owns all the copyrights for the code.

Iâ€™m sorry you donâ€™t like 96. I am proud of that project for a number of reasons. One of my favorite additions to that version of the game, is that way the defensive players will swap zones, so that there is better coverage. This was Scott Probinâ€™s brain-child, but I still thought it was really cool.

Iâ€™m not in contact with the people who make NHL today. The entire time Iâ€™ve been in this industry Iâ€™ve worked in the capacity of a contractor.

In this capacity, we do what the client asks for. In our case, the client is the publisher/production team in charge of the project.

Iâ€™ve never really gotten to choose what Iâ€™m working on. Iâ€™ve spent my career doing whatever work is made available to me.

After NHL I worked on a lot of Madden, and NCAA Football products. We get paid as we go, by milestone.

We only get paid if the production team is happy with the milestone, so all our efforts are put into making the producer happy.At some point I hope that our company will make enough money, to where we could self-finance a project. Then we could actually have full control over a project.

From NHL94 to NHL95, the Programmer on Genesis made the big changes in the code. It was really the design/ production team that decided what changes he should make to the project. All the different production titles are confusingâ€¦ Generally speaking the lower level the title (Assistant Producer/ Associate Producer) the more work you actually do on the product from day to day. Everything has to be eventually approved by the higher level production though (Line Producer/ Executive Producer/ or just Producer).

Back with the SNES and the Genesis, those consoles are very slow computers. As a result all the programming is done in assembler. High level languages like C could not be used, because they would take up too much memory, and run too slowly. There is no automated way to convert a program from the Genesis to work on the SNES, and vice versa, so generally speaking, people that were good at 68k assembler, would work on Genesis, and people good with the 65816 CPU would work on the SNES. The processors are very different beasts. For all the similarities between the Genesis and the SNES, the hardware is still very different. Someone would have been hired to translate changes from the Genesis to the SNES.

So were you happy there was a change for NHL'95?

I was happy to have a job, working on video games. I really like the Super NES.

Did you think that SNES NHL'95 was as good as SNES NHL'94?

I know a lot of people thought that the '95 game was tuned too fast. I received all my tuning guidance from Kevin Hogan (the producer lowest on the totem pole). The direction was based on trying to match what they were doing on the Genesis.

I think the SNES NHL'94 gameplay runs more smooth than Genesis NHL'94 yet Genesis FPS is so much Higher. Can you explain please.

The game play speed, and the Frames Per Second are 2 different things. In game time, lets say that it takes 1 second to move half way across the screen. If the FPS is low, lets say 10 FPS, you will see 10 different positions as the player moves across the screen. This will likely look like the guy is teleporting from place to place. At 60 FPS, you would see 60 different positions, it will move a lot more smoothly.

What I describe above applies mostly to motion. Most of the animations play at 10-15 FPS, regardless of framerate. The original 94 code is more than adequate for playing smooth animations. It just didnâ€™t move things around the screen, as smoothly as the machine is capable of doing.

The tuning changes made to the game play, so that players would skate faster.

Iâ€™m certain Mark Lesser did those based on what the

producer Rob Martyn in charge of the project were asking him to do.

The Art Director for NHL94 and 95 was Nancy Waisanen What was she thinking for NHL95?

The graphics are really bad.

I really couldnâ€™t say what she was thinking.

The production staff wanted the graphic more enhanced?

Marketing and production wanted the graphics to change from year to year, so that it looks like a different game.

Anyone one with a producer title, is part of the production staff. Titles have changed a lot over the years at EA.

Hey, it was the sign of the times that the 32-bit consoles would come around. It had to be done.

But all things considering, I actually think that NHL 95 is not a bad game as people think it is.

*Cues for a large wave of boos from the guys showing their nonconformity*

I know what you're feeling, but the game isn't horrible or anything. So what if you can't score on dekes more easily than before? This is why you need to practice your skills for! There's still the one-timer, the end around, the pass shot and the redline shot; you still have many options to go for when it comes to scoring. What do you think this is? NHL 92 and 93??? Be reasonable, ppl!

If anything, I can name 2 hockey games worse than perhaps NHL 97: Brett Hull Hockey and NHL Stanley Cup. Stomach either one of them and then we'll talk.

I still stand by my point, as NHL 95 isn't a horrible game as some of the guys here make of it, IMHO. If anything, at least you can get used to its gameplay quicker than with NHL 97, since that one is uberfast and if you use the international teams and the All-Stars, it gets even worse because of the high rating players that compose their rosters.

I dunno if I can count NHL 98 in the ecuation, since it looks like a carbon copy of 97, except perhaps for the menus. Link of this video from UrinatingTree is here:

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Okay, I'm really an odd fit here. NHL 95 (Genesis) is actually my favorite of the series... probably because it's my first (Not to mention I love the music, too). I also quite love NHL 07 (PSP), possibly because I actually don't utterly suck at it.

94's the one I've been playing the most as of late, though. Probably due to all those little neat features such as the game highlights and crowd meters, though. Minor, minor features, but it's ridiculously fun to play with them.

Hmmm, i must say, now, i pardon EA for all those crappy games. NHL 09 is truly great, and even more since they updated the game so you can't do any more cheezy glitches. Cross Creasing has rebecome the most succesful way to score (And yes it is in real hockeY).

NHL 09 ROX

They still need to work on theyre hockey knowledge for ratings and potential... but that's all ok.

Hmmm, i must say, now, i pardon EA for all those crappy games. NHL 09 is truly great, and even more since they updated the game so you can't do any more cheezy glitches. Cross Creasing has rebecome the most succesful way to score (And yes it is in real hockeY).

NHL 09 ROX

They still need to work on theyre hockey knowledge for ratings and potential... but that's all ok.

Last thing they should add.... VINTAGE TEAMS.

I would love to kickass with Bure in 09'

Btw what you think they will do in 2010? they can't call it 10?

You mean having classic teams like in Madden games? Sounds good to me!

But it'll be more effective if they can have the database with all the players from the past. They should also release a special package with NHL 94 as a bonus in, say, an anniversary pack.

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This is such an interesting topic. I was always under the impression that High Score Productions was behind the changes in NHL 95.

I don't recall if it was NHL 95 or NHL 96 but I scored on an offside and had a player disappear through the boards, only to come back celebrating as if a goal happened later in the game. I never even bothered getting the game after playing it at a friend's place.

Not that I needed to though, by then I had moved on to NHL 95/96 on PC.

I do wonder what made NHL 94/95 PC so special for me. Was it the gameplay? Was it the graphics? For me personally, the gameplay of 94 Genesis wasn't that great because it was way too offensive. It was basically a competition between who could get more triple dekes and wraparounds off, and playing against the CPU was a joke. The PC version played a little more like real hockey and you could have some insanely tough games against the CPU.

EA had a ton of missteps from NHL 95-NHL 06 (except for NHL 2001, 2002, 2004), but I think they've finally gotten back to innovating and building upon what they had in the previous year (like they did for 92-94, 95/96 PC). Under Dave Warfield the games would go between being too arcadish to being too hard and not fun every year. Since Littman has become the producer of the NHL series, they are back on track. NHL 09 for 360/PS3 is such a deep game but it has the spirit of fun and spontaneity that NHL 94 had as well. There are a couple of features that they have dropped over the years that I'm still waiting to be brought back (Playoff Mode, Saving Games, Multiplayer/Online Season mode, Free-4-all), but 09 overwhelmingly is a triumph IMO.

I also am surprised that outside of NHL 06 (which was lame because they used fake rosters and was only available on PS2) that they haven't gone back to the 94 Genesis or 95 PC Engine and updated it for current handhelds.

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This game was a complete disaster. The game was just too fast and scoring was way too easy. The only thing the game had going for it was season mode. It would have been better if EA retained 94's gameplay and combined it with the season mode.

EA already did that, the game that resulted was NHL 06, which was one of their worst.

Its nearly impossible to recapture the magic of NHL 94 on a full blown simulation game. The only chance for it to happen would be a DS version or WiiWare/XBLA/PSN version. But I doubt EA will do it.

And like in my previous post, I think under Littman they have captured some magic with NHL 09. There are still a few annoyances which bug me, but they are getting to the point where the games finally are the culmination of the best parts of the past rather than trying to add selling points each year and destroying gameplay balance in the process.

Yeah NHL 09 is good, still all the top players only do gay wrap around five holes, and i play a lot of that s**t, im like 1500 in the world, so its my daily bread. Anyway i think the worst version ever, still is and for ever will be

NHL 2005, most hard/boring game ever. Can Hardly score on the top level.

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They are finally bringing back playoff mode in NHL 10. And they are also dedicated to removing exploits as well (claim they've gotten rid of all of the exploits used online in 09). If it has competitive and co-op support in playoff mode, it could finally be the game to have all of the features of the old games.